Objectivity (Complete)

Examples

“Be the change you want to see in the world. “ Gandhi

Chanting this often in my mind, among the examples that continue to inspire me are two powerful women, Susanne Langer and Jane Addams. Not well known to history their names are resurfacing as modern brain science stimulates a new generation of philosophers who point to the value of the arts in developing what is most meaningful in human beings. Art refines decision making with awareness of beauty as a guide to the wisdom of the body. Moving gracefully, in harmony with surroundings, has a feeling attached in the same way as does vertigo at the top edge of a cliff. The human mode of experiencing movement is the universal we share. Susanne Langer saw the body in motion and its analogues in the arts as the foundation of philosophy. In her brilliant summation, “Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling”, she makes clear the centrality of the range of human feeling as signifying values and directing choices. While more celebrated philosophers were talking their way into meaninglessness, she bravely marched into meaning and its subtleties; value, context, the revelation of being and how these ideas are best expressed in the arts. She ignited a trail of thought that is now reinforced by the areas of philosophy that build on brain science. An example of an academic powerhouse created by immersion in scholarship she could lay out a view of things that made sense in its honest inclusion of subjective reality. As John Dewey wrote, “When the personal is taken into account it will revolutionize philosophy.”

 Before them both Jane Addams took her ideas to the people with Hull House. Her vision was to provide art and music to the poor immigrant communities using the universality of how we feel as shown in art to connect people beneath the surface differences. Though she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her anti-war efforts later, Hull House also hosted political debate and she was instrumental in advocating laws to protect children from industry’s exploitation. Her work anticipated today’s community arts movement and the focus on positive action rather than punitive codes.

Today pre-twenty-first century attitudes still exist that take it upon themselves to correct others’ behavior while missing vast reservoirs of misbehavior in themselves. No matter what parents try to correct in their children they can’t make a dent in the powerful day-to-day example being set by how they themselves behave. Pushing other people around just causes resentment particularly when there are glaring inconsistencies in the behavior of whoever is in control. When the police officers in Baltimore get a maximum of $350,000 bail for killing someone they shouldn’t have been arresting in the first place and a teenager that broke a police car window got $500,000 bail, there’s an obvious imbalance.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/teen-faces-higher-bail-baltimore-cops-accused-murder

This example shows the serious crisis of proportions in the underlying problem. Jane Addams called it the “unpardonable sin” to value an inanimate object/symbol or idea/law over the individual human being in a particular context. Justice is about balance, the blindfolded woman holding the scales. It is when facts aren’t seen together as a picture that the disproportions go unnoticed.

 Art educates proportions and the young artists of today are connected to the world in unique ways in tune with changing modern circumstances. This year’s graduating class is sending many fine examples of dedication to what can be offered through who they are into a world that needs what they can show it, who understand that the more you give to whatever you do, the happier you are. Many participated in the protests and the cleanup and helped shine light on the unnoticed parts of the picture. And in their work they reach into the heart, cutting through the mind-numbing repetitions of popular culture to offer deeper recognition of what it’s like to be alive now.

Objectivity

                   This is a detail from my current drawing in progress.

Reflection

Visual philosophy, like any philosophy, has central ideas upon which many other ideas can be structured. One primary visual principle is mirroring, the essence of understanding. Mirroring an expression is how we know its meaning. Whether we spontaneously make the expression physically or just in the brain’s mirror neuron system we get the expression’s meaning because we feel it inside. Mirror neurons fire as though you were in the face or body position whether you watch or read or hear an action described.

This correspondence can be useful to unfurl the murky areas of our psyche. We find what we need to see in order to unlock what wants to be noticed. Every image stirs connections prompted by that structure. Reflecting on where our attention is drawn can show us themes of our inner dynamics that may be influencing our behavior without our awareness. In all the possibilities the world offers, the thing that captures attention often mirrors current inner conditions. The feeling attached to every image is a result of the adjustments and associations we make for that structure in combination with the existing mood and predispositions affecting the way we respond. Still water reflects most accurately. As the state of mind becomes more agitated so does the distortion in the reflection. One of the many benefits of meditation is simply letting the ripples of the mind settle so as to better reflect. We can’t grasp something until we see it. To see it requires attention to the subject in the here and now and not the internal weather. To develop visual intelligence, understanding the internal weather that predisposes our response to overall patterns is the first step. An unfolding event that can be taken in stride most days might cause a meltdown if the initial conditions are turbulent. This is where art can help to increase self-awareness. Art distills the essential structure of feeling so that we can reflect on it externally. Looking at what we respond to in art shows something of our own feelings at that time. As Joseph Campbell said, ”The eyes are the scouts of the heart”. Finding the art that moves us will trigger the associations we’re trying to organize.

Rupert Sheldrake sees the task of consciousness as the act of making choices in the “field of possibilities”.  Reflecting on the movement of thought reveals the choices made and the ones that are pending. Listening, looking and every act of attention make selections that open new choices. All choices participate in consciousness but deliberate mindful awareness swells the quality of the experience.

Mindfulness is a capacity that can be developed with meditation. Even starting with ten minutes of watching the wild uncontrollable movie of the mind is to learn something important about what wants attention and how little conscious control we often have regarding its movement. If you don’t follow the thoughts they’ll give up and start to subside, and then you can feel the air come in your nostrils, and your chest rise and fall, and places where you are crooked can be noticed and straightened. In the I Ching it says “With the back straight the ego disappears”. If we could get the marks of life’s difficulties out of our bodies perhaps they would fade from our minds. It might be easier to do than the other way around. With the habit of meditation it becomes possible to reflect more mindfully on right where we are.

Materialism

True Fiction

So, I’m reading a novel where the character is describing the moment of death, according to the "Tibetan Book of the Dead", and I’m struck, again, by the evidence that a core of truth underlies all our fabrications. Awareness of the same scenes as though from a template, arising in such varied lives gives a glimpse of everything as part of a grand idea, individualities structured on a universal core. In the book the daughter is telling her father that it says the only moment of clarity we have in life is at the instant of death. The scene transports me to a moment when my father and I were the only ones left at the dinner table after a family gathering. He was in that early stage of his mental withdrawal which made him less reactively argumentative (he became much easier to be around as he continued away from us) and I suggested that at the moment of death we would realize something about life that could not be seen while still clinging to the personal being, that when all the urgencies of living fell away, the striving and intention over, it would be then that the meaning of it all might be clearly visible. It was an idea that made sense to me, though hadn’t come across it in my reading yet, an idea floating up from the depths of the collective consciousness that now resonated with the thinking of the daughter in the story. We all draw from the same well.

The imagining of scenes draws from the materials of personal memory where it resonates with the chords of being human. Reading a story by David Foster Wallace has left me shuddering with its radical honesty. James Baldwin affects me like a force of nature, which leads me to consider whether it’s the “nature” in human nature we should reflect on with compassion. The deep truth of fiction is often the stuff we don’t see or admit to ourselves, and then are reassured seeing that those traits are there in others. The complex emotional bindings intertwining in human relationships are nature unfurling within us. Intellect grows with the size of the social group. Every individual has unique quirks of signaling so each different relationship has its own patterns and associated feelings. We are each other’s best education. Yet in the past that mental/emotional schooling had levels of physical signaling to draw from. Body language, facial expression, tone and pace of voice can be lost as technology intervenes. So looking at art is all the more necessary to compensate for the lack. We can use the essence of feeling distilled by the artist to extend our sensitivity to the expression of places and people. Works that stir personal depths mirror unrecognized emotions triggering thoughts, memories and ideas that help us makes sense out of life. All of the arts can serve to sound the depths and it’s the depths that provide our guidance whether we’re paying attention or not. It’s revealing to discover what draws attention whether in a museum or in a book or on line. Choices in art are highly individual and mirror personal truth. Literary fiction uses character and scenario to invite insight. The reader imagines with the palette of personal imagery that resonates with the universal.

If a response is there it’s because something within relates to it. And recognizing it means strengthening that area of sensitivity. The feeling guides attention and that makes it very powerful. Understanding personal feeling helps avoid misdirected reasoning and open depths for insight.

Dispersion